“Flow is a sensation that is designed to keep viewers watching”
I’m sorry, but there is no better way to put this; time, space and experience ARE highly tied into the Teresa Rizzo’s concept of flow and the now apparent “post-flow era.” Time plays into in a simple way, having playlists and PDR’s such as Foxtel iQ, lets us personalise our “media time.” This ‘personalisation’ is revolutionary to the pre conceived notion of flow, where media created “images, sounds and feelings” to mass audiences, working on a level appropriate to all and expecting to be perceived as the centrality of a home. Contrary to the belief that we are now living in a “post-flow era” we are living in an era with the largest range of flow ever. Every new media outlet and source has it’s own flow, all media types have their own flow, every single person is now receiving their own personalise flow.
Now that we can claim internet, television and music as our own we have to ask the unfortunate question; are these spaces now our places?
“The emphasis here is on the channel as a place to visit rather that tuning in to watch a program that runs at a specific time”
Our playlists represents us, our tastes, our interests, they are personalised how we like it with what we like, so why are they any less of a place then our very own bedroom is? We no longer move through these media forms and stop when we like something. We sift out what we like and put it firmly where we want it. So when we “visit” our playlist it is not us entering a intangible space of intercommunication and sharing, we are visiting shows, music, movies that we clicked on and organised to our clocks. We have interfered with the original state they where in when media introduced them to us, took them out of context, away from commercials and introduced them to an entirely different spatial mode. They are now in our place, and we do not have to share them with anybody.
With our customised bubbles and private places the entire experience of media has shifted. There is no centre and our once continuos flow is now full of “breaks.” Changing from Youtube to Ninemsn to Facebook, the average consumer will browse and flick and change numerous times whilst engaging in media. With no centre and hardly any control of keeping consumers in one place, the flow is flipping out. The entire experience of media now revolves around us, therefor media revolves around our needs and we can experience all types of media from the perspective of a participant rather then a passive consumer. This takes away from the bond once experiences amongst people when uniting over media and rather creates a personal bond between ourselves and media. The ‘flow’ is our friend suggesting and providing us with things we like, whilst the medium is the conversation channeling it to us. We are not even close to a post-flow era, it’s just had a little make over.
Bibliography
Rizzo, Teresa. “Programming Your Own Channel: An Archaeology of the Playlist:. In Kenyon, Andrew, Ed. TV Futures: Digital Television Policy in Australia. Carlton, VUC: Melbourne University Press, 2007, 108-134.
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